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Friday, December 20, 2013
News / Opinion Conservative think tank calls out McCrory's lies about jobs
Posted By John Grooms on Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 10:41 AM
This week Gov. McCrory released a video claiming credit for a drop in North Carolina's unemployment rate to 8 percent, down from June's 8.8 percent, citing "difficult decisions" that "had to be made" to bring prosperity to the state. Ironically, at about the same time GuvPat was wrapping up his message to North Carolina citizens, the money and politics blogger for an influential conservative think tank was essentially saying that McCrory is full of it. James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute looked into our wise leaders' decision to reduce unemployment insurance this year, and found that it did nothing to curb the unemployment rate.
The lawmakers and McCrory reduced the maximum payout by a third, and cut the number of weeks residents can get unemployment payments. The cuts automatically made the state ineligible for the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which provides extended benefits that are set to expire at the end of the year. Pethokoukis notes the Republican claims that the cuts made lazy-ass out-of-work North Carolinians get off their butts and look for a damn job (not precisely their words), which is why the state's unemployment rate dropped to 8 percent. Pethokoukis then goes on to destroy that argument by simply citing facts.
You can check out the AEI link for full details, but the takeaway is "it looks like the cut in unemployment benefits moved people out of the labor force rather than into employment," with the actual rate of employed North Carolinians decreasing a bit. In addition - and this hits at the core of the GOP's bogus claims - if the state's labor force participation rate had remained the same as it was in June, N.C.'s unemployment rate would have actually increased to 9.1 percent. AEI goes on to note that Bloomberg News has noticed the same results.
So, along with talking with protesters, reducing taxes for you and me as much as he reduced them for the rich, and fixing the state's supposedly "broken" Medicaid program, we now have one more lie to add to Gov. Pinocchio's roster. Merry Christmas.
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